Occupy Miami Protests Foreclosures, Mortgage Fraud at Courthouse

Occupy Miami protesters took a break from camping out at Government Center this afternoon to fight an ill all too familiar to the Magic City -- mortgage fraud and a foreclosure suffered by one of their own.

Angela Samuels, a longtime community activist with One Miami, local unions, and Occupy Miami, expects to be tossed any day from her family's longtime Liberty City home after falling behind on a loan that she considers to be mortgage fraud. A crowd gathered with her at the downtown civil courthouse this afternoon to protest her pending eviction.

Samuels' mother and father bought the family's house in 1970. "I grew up there, I've been there 43 years," she said of the house where she now lives with her niece and her blind sister. "After the death of my father in 2002, an investor came and said that he could help me."

The house was, at the time, stuck in probate court. A speculator offered a loan with ballooning interest rates, and Samuels says she unintentionally got caught in the predatory scheme.

When she couldn't keep up with payments any more, Samuels says CitiBank foreclosed on the house. "I'm just suffering," she says. "I'm homeless tomorrow."

Liz Tracy has her master’s degree in religion from Florida State University. She has written for publications such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and Ocean Drive. Liz spent three years as New Times Broward-Palm Beach’s music editor and is currently the managing editor at Tom Tom Magazine.